INDIAN budget carrier GoAir said today it has placed an order for 72 new A320 Airbus aircraft in a deal worth up to $6.1bn (£3.79bn) at list prices.
“These are all firm orders and the deliveries will start in 2015. We may take as many as 15 planes each year,” the company’s managing director Jeh Wadia told Dow Jones Newswires in Mumbai.
The basic A320 is priced at $85m (£52.84m), which would value the deal at $6.1 billion, but airlines normally negotiate undisclosed discounts from Airbus when buying in bulk.
The booming Indian market has become a key source of business for France-based Airbus, which won its biggest ever order in January from GoAir’s local competitor IndiGo.
Indigo ordered 180 A320s, worth $15.6bn (£9.69bn) at list prices.
The Economic Times newspaper last week said GoAir and India’s largest private carrier Jet Airways would announce orders for Airbus planes worth $6.5bn (£4.03bn) at the forthcoming Paris Air Show.
The financial daily had said GoAir was looking to order at least 50 of the narrow-body A320 jets worth $4bn (£2.48bn) for use on short-haul domestic routes.
Jet Airways’ order, confirmed by the company’s chairman Naresh Goyal, was for 10 wide-body A330 aircraft worth $2.5bn (£1.55bn) and would be used to help it expand its routes in Europe.
Air India, the state-run national carrier, is also planning to take 10 A330s and 16 A320s on a rental basis, The Economic Times said.
GoAir’s Wadia said the firm would take delivery of 10 A320 planes from a previous order in the next two years.
